The maid hesitated, looked him up and down with a measured gaze, and made up her mind. “Very well. I suppose you’d best come in.” She stood aside.
Emily was sitting up on the bed, fully dressed in a gown of dark blue-she had nothing black with her. Her hair was loose at the back of her neck and she was almost as pale as the pillows behind her. Her eyes were cavernous with shock.
He sat down on the bed and took her hand, holding it in both of his. It felt limp and small as a child’s. There was no point in saying he was sorry. She must know that, must see it in his face and feel it in his touch.
“Where’s Charlotte?” she asked shakily.
“Coming. Aunt Vespasia sent her carriage; she’ll be here soon. But I have to ask you some questions. I wish I didn’t, but wishing doesn’t change things.”
“I know.” She sniffed, and the tears escaped her will and ran down her cheeks. “Dear heaven, do you think I don’t know!”
Pitt could feel the maid behind his shoulder, alert and defensive, ready to drive him out the moment he threatened Emily, and he loved her for it.
“Emily, George was deliberately killed by someone in this house. You know I have to find out who.”
She stared at him. Perhaps part of her mind had understood that already, or at least rejected all the other possibilities, but she had not actually faced it as bluntly as that. “That means-the family, or Jack Radley!”
“I know. Of course it is conceivable we could turn up a reason among the servants, but I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas! Why on earth would one of Uncle Eustace’s servants murder George? They hardly even knew of him a month ago. Anyway, why would any servant murder anyone in the house? It’s a nice thought, but it’s stupid.”
“Then it is one of the eight of you,” he said, watching her face.
She breathed out slowly. “Eight? Thomas! Not
He gripped her hand harder. “No, of course I don’t. Nor do I think it was Aunt Vespasia. But I have to find out who did, and that involves finding out the truth about a lot of things.”
She said nothing. Behind him he could hear the maid winding her hands in her apron. Silently he blessed the woman again, and Vespasia for providing her.
“Emily-could Jack Radley have imagined that you might one day marry him, were you free to?”
“No …” Her voice faded away and her eyes left his, then came back. “Not from anything I said. I–I flirted a little-a very little. That’s all.”
He thought that was less than the truth, but it did not matter now. “Is there anything else?” he persisted.
“No!” Then she realized that he was no longer thinking only of Jack Radley but of anyone. “I don’t know. I can’t think why anyone should want to kill George. Couldn’t it possibly have been an accident, Thomas?”
“No.”
She looked down at her hand, still in his. “Could it have been meant for someone else, and not George?”
“Who? Does anyone else have coffee first thing in the morning?”
Her voice was hardly even a whisper. “No.”
There was no need to pursue the conclusion; she understood as well as he did.
“What about William March, Emily? Could he have been jealous enough to kill George over his attentions to Sybilla?”
“I don’t think so,” she said honestly. “He showed no sign of even having noticed, much less caring. I think all he minds about is his painting. But anyway …” Her fingers curled round his, responding to his grip. “Thomas, I swear I heard George and Sybilla quarreling last night, and when George came up, before he went to bed, he came to see me and-” She struggled for a moment to keep mastery of herself. “And he let me know that it was over with Sybilla. Not-not directly, of course. That would have been admitting there was something-But we understood one another.”
“He quarreled with Sybilla?”
“Yes.”
There was no point in asking her if the quarrel had been violent enough to prompt murder: she could not answer, nor would it mean anything if she did.
He stood up, letting her hand go gently. “If you think of anything at all, please send for me. I can’t leave it go.”
“I know that. I’ll tell you.”
He smiled at her very slightly, to blunt the edge of what he had said and to try to throw the frailest of lines across the gulf between the policeman and the man.
She swallowed hard, and the corners of her mouth lifted in an answering shadowy smile.
It was an hour later when the bedroom door opened again and Charlotte came in. She said nothing at all, but came and sat on the bed, reached out her hand to Emily, and slipped her arms round her and let her weep as she needed to, holding her close and rocking a little back and forth, murmuring old, meaningless words of comfort from childhood.
6
When at last Emily lay back against the pillows her face was drawn, her eyes puffy, with dark shadows below them, and her usually pretty hair straggled in untidy wisps. The sight of her brought home to Charlotte the reality of death and fear far more violently than all the words imaginable, or excessive weeping. People weep for many things.
She began with the painful, practical help she knew was the only way to move to any real healing. She rang the bell by the bed.
“I don’t want anything,” Emily said numbly.
“Yes, you do.” Charlotte was firm. “You want a cup of tea, and so do I.”
“I don’t. If I take anything I shall be sick.”
“No, you won’t. But if you go on crying you will. It’s enough for now. We have things to do.”
Suddenly Emily was furious; all her shock and fear exploded in resentment because Charlotte was still safe, wrapped up in her own marriage, and this was just one more adventure for her. She was sitting on the bed with a businesslike complacency in her face, and Emily hated her for it. George had been carried away, white and cold, only an hour ago, and Charlotte was busy! She should have been shattered and frozen inside, as Emily was.
“My husband was murdered this morning,” she said in a tight, hard voice. “If all you can do is exercise your curiosity and self-importance, then I’d feel a lot better if you’d go back home and get on with your housework, or whatever it is you do when you haven’t got anyone else’s life to meddle in.”
For a moment Charlotte felt as if she had been slapped. The blood burned in her face, and her eyes stung. The retort stopped on her lips only because she could find no words for it. Then she took a deep breath and remembered Emily’s pain. Emily was younger; all the protective feelings of childhood came back in a tumble of images, always Emily the smallest, the last to achieve any milestone to maturity. Emily had envied her, admired her, and tried desperately to keep up, just as she herself was always a step behind Sarah.
“Who murdered George?” she asked aloud.
“I don’t know!” Emily’s voice rose dangerously.
“Then don’t you think we had better find out-very quickly, before whoever it is makes it look even more as though you did?”
Emily gasped, and her face looked even grayer than before.
At that moment the door opened and Digby came in. As soon as she saw Charlotte her expression hardened.
But Charlotte had not forgotten all her early years in her parents’ home, when she was accustomed to having a lady’s maid, and the habit returned automatically.
